I have an M3 as well as the M9. (It's away at the moment having its slow shutter speeds sorted out. Basically being cleaned and lubricated.)

I have been scanning the negatives with a PLustek OpticFilm 8200i SE Scanner, then going through Lightroom and maybe a little PS and then out to whatever format is needed. I've used Silverfast but mainly on old colour negs and slides. I've also tried a couple of the Lightroom plugins but I'm using them less and less now as it seems very easy to go over the top and make pixel clumps.

I've just uploaded an M3 shot that went through that route to my album in the gallery.It's not a very objective demo shot as I don't know what film it was on! Let alone anything else technical. But I'll do more careful testing as soon as I get the M3 back!

The Tri-X and Ilford HP-5 negatives I shot with the M4-P are stored in archival sleeves which, with the corresponding proofsheets are kept in acid-free boxes in storage. I keep a small portfolio of 8x10 inch prints from those days in an acid-free box. The three images I uploaded to LVL gallery were not scanned; I simply lit the prints as evenly as possible and reshot them with the M9 (at ISO 400) and Summicron-M 35mm ASPH, processed through Lightroom.

I don't have much call or desire to scan my old negatives.

My digital images are shot and stored in RAW in Lightroom and on a CalDigit 2TB external hard drive. I am thinking about investing in a RAID-5/SSD system, but I need to learn more about it before making that investment. And, it may be overkill for my needs. I might do better spending a bit less and investing in an Epson 3880 printer.

Anthony, your B&W portrait of the man wearing a stack of hats is terrific!

I do have an enormous number of negs and tranies, and almost no prints. The children are interested in seeing all the old stuff. So there will be a big scanning effort that will probably end up in a 4(?) volume family album.

But the other angle is that I want to shoot with film again. BW probably Tri X and develope it myself. Scan it in House, and output through the normal print chain. And that's really why I bought the Plustek

James....

I was assuming you still have the M4P and were still shooting from time to time. The dates in the gallery somehow didn't register till I just looked again.

Get an M3, with a Summicron 50mm. They are so addictive; I have to get up and have a quick check that it still there in the middle of the night and that I'm not dreaming!

As for the hard disc side of things, the prices are falling so quickly that it is probably worth waiting as long as possible before investing. BUT meanwhile back up on a portable harddisc as often as as you can.

Yes the Guy selling the hats is incredible. What a face! And his eyes, where are they looking? Look at the enlargement maybe you'll see. The shot took itself, I had nothing to contribute! And I was doing something I rarely do; I was shooting J-Peg in B&W, so that's virtually straight out of the camera.

Thanks for the compliment.

(By the way the M3 neg shot is the guy at the shooting booth in the fair. That was shoot at the Christmas fair here in Beziers this winter.)

I use this workflow for my film Ms and Rolleiflex on an old Epson v500 scanner. I'm very happy with the results, and, while it eats time, I find the process relaxing. Zen and the art of dust spot removal. Ohmmmmmmmm….

I will say that I find the new Tri-X base far too curly for my scanner (dang). But Portra, HP-5, and the Delta's are all terrific - the latter being less static prone, for some reason, attracting less dust.

And I, too, have found that plugins destroy what was attractive about shooting film in the first place: the natural grain and dynamics.

I've been looking at scanners lately, I was never happy with the results from my V500 so I sold it a while back. I'm also not happy with the results from my lab as well, so I think I just need to get a good quality neg scanner but I'm not sure what to get. People still seem to think the old Coolscans are better than the newer Plustek's, but I need to be able to scan 645 film as well, so that leaves me pretty much with either an old used Coolscan LS-8000 (or 9000) or the newer Plustek 120.

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